A telecommunication companies-backed spy bill to protect the Bush administration from any and all criminal investigations into possible invasion of privacy violations of the U.S. Constitution passed a Senate test vote on Wednesday.
The issue has been framed by the mainstream media, the white house, republicans, and lily-livered democrats who have ceded ever more of their congressional consitutional authority to the executive branch for the lasts eight years, as one of national security, extant FISA laws empowered the executive branch to spy on U.S. citizens for reasons of "national security" even filing for permission from the FISA courts.
But with the capitulation of House and Senate democrats, the issue of investigating just who the white house spied on, the when, and the why is made moot.
Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Barak Obama, in an alarmingly familiar pattern of flip-flopping on promises to his constituent voting base, rebuked his recent opposition saying that "national security" trumps telecom immunity. Apparently this constitutional scholar does not see a potential problem.
Voting against the bill in the Senate were 14 Democrats and one independent:
Biden (D-DE)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)
The words of Republican Senator Kit Bond are quite telling:
"We can tell those companies that answered their government's call for help in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks that a grateful nation stands behind them and that they will be given the civil liability protection they rightly deserve."
The teleco's would NOT need civil liability protection unless they KNOWINGLY broke the law. As this version of the law is written, it is enough for the teleco's to produce an "oly-oly-ox-in-free" statement to a judge saying that:
a) the President ordered us to spy
b) the President told us it was legal for us to spy
c) we were only following orders (no matter what our in-house attorneys may have suggested)
Ultimate passage of this law is will further solidify the Cheney administration affirmation of the "unitary executive theory" that the President IS the law (at least in times of war).
Given that the Global War on Terror has been pronounced to be a "long war" with no end in sight, the continuing war on drugs, one ramification of the "teleco immunity law" is that the President has lawful powers to disobey, break, and overturn "the law."
The following Senators were listed as "not voting"
Byrd (D - WV)
Clinton (D - NY)
Kennedy (D- MA)
Obama (D - IL)
McCain (R - AZ)
